Inside Smart Cities: Blockchain, Innovation, Adoption and Reality

September 0911:402019

Mr Anndy Lian, an inter-government blockchain expert and advisor led and moderated a panel session on the future of blockchain smart cities at the World Smart City Expo 2019 in South Korea. This is the largest Smart City related technology exhibition in Asia, where more than 20,000 visitors from 200 cities of 60 countries gathered together to build ‘People-centered’ smart cities.

Major technological, economic and environmental impacts in smart cities have generated great interest. The panel has a good mix of experts where they gave their views on different components that made up within the smart cities.

They are not the typical speakers that touched on the usual smart cities related topics like climate change, energy, governance or sustainability. Instead, they touched on day to day aspects within the city from the advanced electronic products to engaging the cities users with new gaming and interactive apps to how healthcare is like in a futurist city. Mr Anndy Lian who curated this panel on behalf of the organiser wants to be different from the rest of the panels and also staying close to this year’s theme of being “People-centered”.

Ms Jenny Zheng, Partner and Shareholder of ea3w.com, the leading Chinese media company for online procurement service and consumer electronics buying guide shared her views: “We are already living in a smart nation and experiencing first hand on how smart electronic appliances can do for us to our daily lives. I think the leading brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, Sony have done as great job, innovating our lives, giving us a glimpse to the future and getting us used to a brand new future of smart cities+homes.”

The discussion has also touched on the fact that smart cities are not meant for everyone and not everyone in such high tech environment can understand and adapt to the changes around them. There is a need to create awareness and education programs for the users and maybe through games or other incentive schemes to get user onboard faster.

“Smart cities are no stranger to us. But getting used to it is a different thing. I can provide a service layer using our Gaimin gamification engine to encourage more users to adopt and adapt to the smart cities with ease. On top of this, users can also earn tokens and provide valuable data to the authorities.” – Mr Martin Speight, CEO of Gaimin.io said.

In conclusion, Mr Anndy Lian, Book Author of Blockchain Revolution 2030 and also an Ambassador to Blockchain Special Committee of the Gyeongsangbuk-do summarised all the points made: “Smart cities are urban area that uses Internet of things to collect data and manage the lives and cities more efficiently. Enhancing the quality and performance of components such as transportation and utilities. Digital solutions and new technologies such as blockchain will help solve the trust issues and achieve higher quality of ⁭life inside the smart cities. Also the other topic we should look at is how STOs can help fund smart cities and how a regulated digital exchange can facilitate such fund raising. In Singapore, upcoming regulated property asset-backed exchange- SingDax is looking at this and they will surely change the industry. I am looking forward to this.”

The World City Expo 2019 is hosted by Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, LH, K Water and Kintex. The expo is graced by Minister of Korea, esteem foreign VIPs and government officials from Taiwan, Europe, America, Singapore, China, South Africa and etc.